Many types of sports equipment are usable only under certain conditions and/or in specific locales. Examples of such sports equipment include surfboards that may be used at beaches and snow skis that are normally used at ski resorts. The beach and ski areas are often remotely located from the homes of those who use them, therefore the need to transport sports equipment upon vehicles to these locations has long been recognized.
To facilitate the transportation of sports equipment, carriers mountable to passenger vehicles have been developed. There are various types of load carriers, but the most prevalent types include roof mounted carriers and rear end mounted carriers, which are generally convenient for loading bicycles onto the carriers and preventing obstruction of a driver's view. Examples of such bicycle carriers and their component structures are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,772,927 to Bogoslofski for a LOAD CARRIER FOR SPORTS EQUIPMENT, U.S. Pat. No. 5,211,323 to Chimenti et al for a BICYCLE CARRIER ADAPTED TO BE MOUNTED ON THE BACK OF A VEHICLE, U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,767 to Chimenti et al for a BICYCLE CARRIER ADAPTED TO BE MOUNTED ON THE BACK OF A VEHICLE and U.S. Pat. No. 5,363,996 to Raaber et al also entitled BICYCLE CARRIER ADAPTED TO BE MOUNTED ON THE BACK OF A VEHICLE, each of which is commonly owned together with the present invention and whose disclosures are expressly incorporated herein by reference.
The carriers described and disclosed in the above referenced patents are mountable to the rear end of a supporting passenger vehicle. The carriers incorporate mounting members that engage surfaces of a vehicle and clippable straps that, when tightened, secure the load carrier to the vehicle. The carriers further include load supporting members that extend away from the vehicle for receiving the equipment to be transported, e.g., bicycles.
A common feature of many of these known carriers is that the mounting members or the load supporting members comprise arcuate or bent members such that the carriers may be securely mounted upon a vehicle. Some mounting and load supporting members have arced or bent members such that the load carrier may be more stably secured to differently shaped vehicles and vehicles that present different portions of the vehicle, such as the trunk, hatch, or bumper for carrier engagement. In a further example, the load support members of some carriers have arced or bent portions that can be fitted about a spoiler located at the rear of the vehicle.
Despite the specific need addressed by load carriers comprising bent or arced members, these carriers can be difficult to transport or store when not in use because their arced or bent members cannot be efficiently collapsed and tend to take up significant amounts of space and is not very compact. This is a particularly important consideration where packaging of the load carrier is concerned; as packaging goes, every bit that the packaged product can be reduced results in significant savings, particularly when multiplied across many product units. In some cases the mounting members or load supporting members are separated from one another before storage or transport in order to reduce the packaged size of the load carrier. This, however, is undesirable in that loose parts are more likely to be lost from the main article than are connected or integral parts.
The inability to efficiently collapse and store known carriers comprising arced or bent members presents difficulties to manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers because these types of carrier tend to take up significant amounts of space, which renders them more expensive to store and transport, especially to and from overseas markets, and to display. For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a known load carrier 10 having a frame formed by upper and lower mounting members 12 and 14, respectively, and a pair of bicycle supporting arms 16, which project rearward from the frame. The upper and lower mounting members 12 and 14 are generally U-shaped. In the embodiment illustrated, the upper mounting member 12 has arms 18, which are secured to one another by means of bight 22 and the lower mounting member 14 has arms 20, which are connected by bight 24. Each of the arms 18 and 20 are illustrated as comprising bent portions 26 such that the mounting members may be secured to the rear end of transporting vehicle 28 and about a structure of the transporting vehicle such as a spoiler, a trunk lid, a bumper, etc.
As illustrated in FIG. 2, because the bent portions 26 allow the load carrier 10 to be secured to the rear end of a transporting vehicle and about a structure such as a spoiler, a trunk lid, a bumper, etc., when the load carrier 10 is collapsed for storage or transport, by pivoting the upper mounting member 12 and the lower mounting member 14 with respect to one another, and preferably, toward one another, the bent portions cause bights 22 and 24 to contact one another, which prevents further collapse of the structure. As a result, because further collapse of the carrier is prevented by the bights, the carrier tends to take up significant amounts of storage and transport space when not in use. Alternatively, even if the mounting members each have a perimeter that allows one of the mounting members to be received within another, the bent portions 26, nonetheless, continue to take up significant storage and transport space as the bights 22 and 24 remain oppositely disposed with respect to one another.
Furthermore, the inability to efficiently collapse known carriers also presents difficulties to the end user, who is likely to store their carrier in the trunk of their car and not want to take up significant space. Even more problematic, however, is that an end user is not likely to purchase or utilize a carrier that does not effectively collapse when not in use, or purchase or use a carrier that must be assembled or disassembled every time it is used or stored. Indeed, assembly and disassembly can be difficult, time consuming, can result in improper assembly of the carrier and damage to a vehicle, or result in the loss of carrier components. Another problem is that while many assemblies have pivoting mounting members that allow the carrier to be collapsed when they are not being used, many typically do not include means for ensuring that the mounting members are fully pivotally extended when in use, do not include locking means for locking the pivoting members in a pivotally extended position, or include means for urging the pivoting mounting members to maintain a pivotally extended position. As a result, such types of assemblies typically can only be used with certain types of transporting vehicle, are required to be precisely positioned upon transporting vehicles, can tend to be incorrectly installed upon transporting vehicles and can be unstable or prone to failure during use. An example of an assembly having one or more of the deficiencies noted above is MODEL 144A BIKE RACK™, currently commercially available from R.A. Allen Co., Inc. of Lincoln, Mass. Indeed, while the MODEL 144A BIKE RACK™ assembly comprises a pivoting lower mounting member, it does not comprise means for ensuring that the lower mounting member is fully pivotally extended when used, does not include means for locking the lower mounting member in a fully pivotally extended position, and does not include means for urging the lower mounting member to maintain a locked piston. As a matter of fact, the instructions for installing the MODEL 144A BIKE RACK™ specifically indicate that the lower mounting member must be fully extended and precisely located upon a top horizontal surface of a bumper. A problem, thus, is that a user may not fully extend the lower mounting member prior to installation, may not correctly install the carrier upon a transporting vehicle, or the lower mounting member may pivot during transport, e.g., as may occur when traveling over a rough road, such that the carrier may shift during transport and fail.
In view of the above, there is a need to provide a rear mounted load carrier that is readily and efficiently collapsible to a relatively small size, which does not require that carrier components be assembled or disassembled prior to the carrier being used or stowed, and which includes means for preventing and/or minimizing the tendency of carrier members to pivot during use.
In a related aspect, because designs of currently available rear mount load carriers generally disregard the packagable size of the collapsed carrier, the box-packaging required for shipping these carriers is typically quite bulky, with much empty space in the box around the contained carrier. In this day-in-time when products of the nature of rear mount cargo carriers might be made across the street or half-way around the world, shipping and storage becomes a paramount concern. Therefore, solutions that minimize the size (and volume) of the packaged product which must be shipped, as well as stored for varying periods at the manufacturing facility, at the retail outlet, and at various locations in between, are highly sought-after. The present solutions described and disclosed in the balance of this specification work to meet these needs and desires for more compact packaging of the load carrier manufactures, distributors, retailers and consumers.